Now that Build is over I had some time to reflect on the experience. This was my first time at a major developer conference. I’d like to thank my employer for sending me to this awesome event. The theme at this conference has been creating a better developer experience. If you haven’t seen the videos I encourage you to take a look at: https://channel9.msdn.com/events/build/2016

Some of the key announcements at this event:

  • Bash on Windows: This is incredible news. It’s not a full linux system, it’s not a VM, it’s 100% native. You get all the great dev tools that’s on Linux such as awk, grep. Launch vim (or emacs), imagine the ability to launch a bash command and use apt-get.
  • Xamarin is now free: That’s right, 100% free. For all versions of Visual Studio 2015, even community edition.
  • Windows Anniversary edition: Bio-metric security integration for apps and edge, Ink improvements

My favorite sessions:

Introducing ASP.NET Core 1.0: A breif overview of things to come in .NET Core 1.0. Hanselman did a live demo showing off the power of ASP.NET Core, running on docker containers on Azure, AWS, etc.


Power BI Embedded: You now have the ability to integrate Power BI directly into your apps, for some sample code click here.

As I have time I will continue to update this list.